Off The Blocks Swimming Podcast · Off The Blocks Swimming Podcast

Off The Blocks with Michaela Pattinson

·1 hr 59 min·5 clips

Robbie Cox opens the door with Michaela Pattinson and keeps the tone easy. She starts with the shape of the current week at the pool, where the group is small, the trials swimmers are still moving, and the main squad is coming back slowly after a break. From there, the conversation shifts into how a coaching team sets standards, learns from each other, and keeps a club heading in the right direction, with Liv Wunsch's Paris call-up and three swimmers going to Next Gen camp in Canberra sitting inside that larger story. Michaela talks about how much she values being part of a strong coaching environment and how much the day-to-day work improves when everyone on deck is pulling the same way. The episode then settles into the patient work of building a program piece by piece instead of expecting instant results. She reflects on starting without her own squad and moving between groups while the club worked out how it wanted to build. Over time, the program found its shape, and by 2021 it had climbed to a sixth-place finish at age level, which she sees as a meaningful step forward. The show also folds in the history around Nudgee College and the people who have been part of that program before. There is a clear sense that the GPS side of the job mattered because it sat inside that broader club-building work, not just a results chase. Robbie lets the question of balancing school-level coaching and nationals preparation breathe, and Michaela answers with the measured detail that comes from years on deck. The whole thing keeps circling back to standards, patience, and the value of a good coaching room. You finish with a clearer sense of how clubs grow, how coaching teams matter, and why the best results usually start with a lot of ordinary days done well.

As heard by us

A coaching chat that makes the club-building detail easy to picture.

Michaela Pattinson's chat works best as a practical pool deck listen. It moves between coaching yarn and the plain mechanics of keeping swimmers on track toward trials and national goals, with enough range to stay lively.

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Why you'd press play

A coach's-eye tour of building swimmers, squads, and club culture, with a Paris-bound story at the center.

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